Talk:Dudley

Proposed Mosque
Considering this has been scrapped, the coverage is shockingly over the top; the mosque section is bigger than the entire section of Dudley's Attractions! Is the mosque the biggest most exciting thing in the region?? I have left a paragraph as it was a big deal at the time, but if there really needs to be so much written about it, then it needs its own page rather than blighting half of this page. WillDow (Talk) 11:26, 29 September 2011 (UTC)
 * As a local person, I can't remember anyone referring to the planned mosque as a 'Super Mosque'. I think some local papers decided to call it as a 'Mega Mosque' presumably because newspaper sub-editors are fond of alliteration, although they no longer seem so keen on the term. Incidently, the legal process surrounding the process is still grinding on through the courts. http://www.expressandstar.com/news/2014/05/27/second-dudley-mosque-appeal-allowed-amid-political-motivation-allegations/ 193.105.48.20 (talk) 17:10, 15 September 2014 (UTC)

West Brom biggest town in the Black Country?
According to the 2011 census, West Brom has a larger population than Dudley. Of course, defining the boundaries of towns in the Black Country is problematic since after every local government re-organisation or just change in development priorities then the nominal sizes of towns in the region tends to jump up and down.193.105.48.21 (talk) 11:01, 11 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Dudley's population figure has shot down dramatically with the 2011 census, from 194,919 in 2001 to just 79,379, since it now only includes the areas of the historic borough (that is, the town centre and Netherton, along with a few other outlying housing estates), with places like Sedgley and Brierley Hill now being listed as separate 'towns'. Whether or not those places can actually be regarded as stand-alone entities is debatable, as similar places in other 'towns' are still being regarded as part of that town or city. But like you said, these things do just seem to change on a whim, and seeing as Dudley's no longer considered as the 'town centre' by its own local authority, it probably goes some way as to explaining these figures. I say we just remove and avoid using the phrases 'largest town', just to avoid complicating things further. LivingInMediocrity (talk) 14:05, 22 September 2013 (UTC)
 * I look at it this way: whereas some Black Country towns (ie Wolverhampton and Walsall) have developed large city or town centres and in some sense have dominated the smaller towns and villages in their neighbourhood; in other cases (eg Dudley, West Brom, Stourbridge, Halesowen etc), the town centres have remained modest in size. In the latter cases the smaller village centres in the vicinity don't necessarily feel part of their larger neighbour, whatever the civil servants or council officials want. In fact, I'm not sure if there has ever been an official boundary for 'Dudley Town' (unless you count the area under the supervision of the ancient Court Leet for Dudley) it's always been part of a manor or borough with other towns and villages. In the past the edge of the town would have been defined by the fields or coal fields that lay around the built up area.195.194.15.1 (talk) 15:09, 4 February 2014 (UTC)


 * I'd hardly call Dudley a 'modest' sized centre; it may have lacked much in the way of development in recent decades, compared with the likes of Walsall or Wolverhampton, but it still remains a significantly larger centre than others in its vicinity. Stourbridge and Halesowen may be large enough to be considered 'separate' to Dudley despite lying within its modern-day Borough, but they are still significantly smaller centres, especially when compared to similarly populated towns in other regions. And as for you saying
 * "'...smaller village centres in the vicinity don't necessarily feel part of their larger neighbour, whatever the civil servants or council officials want'"
 * I stated before that Dudley is no longer considered the 'centre' of its Borough by council officials. What is officially considered the centre now is the even smaller entity of Brierley Hill, whose only significance is the presence of a large shopping centre, which itself is arguably the cause of Dudley's fall from prominence. The fact remains that Dudley, historically, culturally, and geographically, is the dominant town in its area, regardless of your opinions. To compare the size of Dudley to the likes of Stourbridge just shows a severe ignorance, if you look at it that way.LivingInMediocrity (talk) 16:36, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
 * If you take a historic perspective, perhaps, you might see what I am getting at. If you take a map from the 1920s say, it is clear that the towns and villages of the Black Country were still physically separate. No one then would have said that Sedgley was in Dudley Town - it would have been regarded as a village between Dudley and Wolverhampton. Since then, there has been housing and other development in the gaps between the old towns and villages, but in what are now the regions of Sandwell MBC and Dudley MBC no town grew enough to form a really large centre (I mean on the scale of Walsall and Wolverhampton). This means that the old villages around Dudley (Netherton, Sedgley, the Gornals, Brierley Hill, Quarry Bank etc) are not regarded by locals as suburbs of Dudley Town - they have their own separate identity. If you read the local papers or peruse the local history section of bookshops, you'll see this distinction is quite marked. One of the reasons for this 'separateness' is that Dudley Town centre didn't development sufficiently to influence much the surrounding small centres. 193.105.48.21 (talk) 10:32, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

Speedway Team
I note that the Speedway team have changed their name again back to the original 'Cradley Heathens' http://www.expressandstar.com/news/2013/12/10/dudley-heathens-in-name-change-as-hunt-for-new-home-forges-ahead/ 195.194.15.1 (talk) 14:09, 6 February 2014 (UTC)

Size of Town
This article has been massively improved over the past couple of years or so, but there is one weakness in my opinion and that is exactly what is meant here by Dudley. I presume we are talking about the town but unfortunately it is difficult to determine the size of it objectively. I pass through the centre of Dudley several times per week and I would never class it as a 'very large town'. This is no disrespect to Dudley as I don't think there is anything wrong in being a medium sized or a small town. I would say that the core of the town is the three wards: St James's, St Thomas's and Castle & Priory. Perhaps a little of the area outside of that could be added (eg Woodside)but we're really talking of a population of around 50 000 maximum. I order to get the figure from the 2011 census, you have to add in Netherton but I don't think many Nethertonians would agree that they live in Dudley Town. As for Sedgley, Brierley Hill, Kingswinford, Pensnett, Upper and Lower Gornal, Coseley etc, these area have never been considered as part of Dudley Town. If you get any book on Dudley Town, these areas will not be discussed and the local papers treat them as being outside of the town.Nai1maker (talk) 14:26, 25 March 2014 (UTC)
 * I think the real issue is that the politics of it all are very messy. Until the arrival of Merry Hill, Dudley was the main commercial centre for quite a large area around it, but it was always historically an exclave of Worcestershire, while surrounding communities like Gornal, Sedgley, Brierley Hill etc. were in Staffordshire. Even the castle, which stands at the foot of the High Street, was in Staffordshire! As such, all these places were separate political entities, with their own councils, which each had their own agendas and policies. Both Brierley Hill and Coseley districts pursued incorporation as boroughs to no avail, clearly showing their councils desires to establish themselves as standalone entities. Yet the physical size of their main 'towns' (for want of a better word) didn't reflect their population; Brierley Hill for example had a population of 56,075 in 1961, just a few thousand behind Dudley's 62,965. Yet Brierley Hill's centre dwarfed in comparison to Dudley's, both in physical size and in the variety of businesses it offered. Unless people in the likes of Brierley Hill didn't shop at national chains and department stores, I'm guessing they would have most likely gone into Dudley. At most that would have made these places satellite communities, rather than standalone 'towns'. But the political make-up of the area didn't fit that reality, and unlike other nearby boroughs which did annex neighbouring districts, I'm guessing the difference in counties (along with Dudley's status as a unitary authority outside county control) didn't sit well with the county councils who would have lost control of areas to another authority. So politically, Dudley remained small, despite serving a larger population base.


 * Even when central government did adjust the boundaries, political alignments didn't allow for the borough to expand north and eastwards, only to the south and west. After the inclusion of Stourbridge and Halesowen into the borough, the town centre itself lay very much off-centre in its own rapidly-expanded municipality, with its councillors outnumbered by those from other districts, each with their own political ambitions and desires for their communities. Add into that the creation of Merry Hill, and Dudley's prominence as a commercial centre also waned, to the point where it could no longer be identified as a 'large' town, simply because its political make up didn't allow for it. 86.184.116.12 (talk) 13:21, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

Demography
Demography is really about population statistics. Everything in this section starting from the phrase "Dudley used to have a large theatre ...." should be deleted as it's not about demography and is therefore not relevant to this part of the article.Nai1maker (talk) 10:06, 2 April 2014 (UTC)
 * It was included I think as an explanation because of a subjective comment regarding Dudley's lack of a theatre being a reason for its "modest size", or something along those lines. Since that comment has been subsequently removed, I see no harm in removing that line from the Demography header. 86.151.122.85 (talk) 11:30, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

Strategic Town Centre
The introduction to this article suggests that the local authority 'moved the Strategic Town Centre designation to Brierley Hill'. However, I think that the Strategic Town Centre designation was carried out by central government. Also I don't think it was 'moved' from Dudley Town as I don't think Dudley was ever officially a 'Strategic Town Centre'.193.105.48.21 (talk) 11:26, 11 June 2014 (UTC)


 * In the latest development proposals by Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council regarding the town centre, it refers to Brierley Hill as the 'new strategic centre', and Dudley as a 'former strategic centre'. By that logic, it is pretty easy to deduce that Dudley was indeed previously considered the strategic town centre of the borough. Also, although the go-ahead had to be officially sanctioned by central government, it was the local authority who put forward the proposals in the first place.86.184.117.95 (talk) 14:02, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

History
According to this article: "the castle provided the centre from which the town and borough grew". I'm not really sure if any references can be found to support this. For one thing, the castle has always stood at one end of the old town. The town grew up around what is now the market place.193.105.48.20 (talk) 11:04, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

Black Country 'Towns'
I see in the latest edit, a reference to West Brom being the biggest Black Country town has been removed. I had a look at the source of the data http://www.lovemytown.co.uk/Populations/TownsTable1.asp (which referenced the 2011 census) and found the following:

Position              Name              Population

89                    West Bromwich      91,930

110                   Dudley             79,379

135                   Walsall            67,594

147                   Stourbridge        63,298

163                   Halesowen          58,135

191                   Kingswinford       50,801

201                   Smethwick          48,765

239                   Tipton             42,407

306                   Rowley Regis       34,260

330                   Brierley Hill      31,430

335                   Sedgley            30,979

434                   Oldbury            23,964

452                   Cosley             23,104

544                   Wednesbury         19,029

552                   Darlaston          18,803

The information is quite interesting from the point of view of how the statiticians have divided up the Black Country Towns. Of course, what we are dealing with here are 'built-up areas' which are not necessarily the same as what most people would regard as a town. Note the 'built-up areas' have superceded the 'urban sub-areas' of the 2001 census. 195.194.15.4 (talk) 15:32, 4 December 2014 (UTC)


 * The statistics for West Bromwich, from what I remember, include two 'built-up areas'; one for West Bromwich itself, and another, called 'West Bromwich East', which covers the residential area east of Sandwell Valley. The individual areas on their own are both smaller than Dudley's 'built-up area', which is probably what this edit is based on.


 * It is also interesting to note how Wolverhampton, Birmingham, Sutton Coldfield, and Solihull's 'built-up areas' haven't been carved up to the extent that the others have in the West Midlands have, which I find unusual given the number of suburban villages and towns they incorporate.109.155.183.196 (talk) 13:45, 9 December 2014 (UTC)


 * There is a fairly arbitrary division of the area in my opinion - for example, why have Coseley but not Bilston? And where is Cradley Heath? I couldn't see it on the list. Maybe it's included in Rowley Regis along with Old Hill and Blackheath? Presumably the 'West Bromwich East' that you mention is Great Barr. 195.194.15.4 (talk) 14:35, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

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Notable People
I see the list of notable people has been expanded quite considerably over the past few years; could it be a suggestion that the list be moved to a separate article, like the lists for Birmingham and Wolverhampton? --86.157.181.188 (talk) 13:20, 19 March 2017 (UTC)

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Worcestershire or Staffordshire?
Many sources list Dudley as being historically in Worcestershire, but Wikishire's map places it in Staffordshire:https://wikishire.co.uk/map/#Dudley@52.512,-2.095/centre=52.517,-2.074/zoom=11. I've gathered that it kind of overlaps, but which one is it mostly in? --86.160.10.212 (talk) 11:51, 9 August 2020 (UTC)
 * You'll find a lot about the history in the article about Worcestershire. --David Biddulph (talk) 11:57, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

Demography section - Ethnic Unrest subheading change
The protests by the English Defence League and others were reportedly about a proposed mosque. The newspaper sources cited make no mention of "Ethnic Unrest". This subheading looks to be a Wikipedia contributor's own interpretation of the events. This interpretation may or may not be justified, but is not supported by reliable sources. A more accurate and neutral subheading is "Protests against proposed mosque". Rupples (talk) 09:26, 11 November 2022 (UTC)

Further to the above, I wonder whether its time this subsection was removed altogether from the article. It comes across as a news item WP:NOTNEWS. Three of the four inline references have the same publication date and the other, three months later, merely updates the police investigation. Unless there has been some longstanding impact of the protest, it's better removed. I'll give it a couple of weeks before doing so, if no objections raised.Rupples (talk) 22:51, 6 September 2023 (UTC)